Oct 30th, 2006

By Max Lewin

CrossFit Oakland Athlete and Jujitsu Instructor Sam Larson will be testing for his Sandan (3rd degree black belt) in Danzan Ryu Jujitsu tomorrow, Monday October 30, 2006 at Suigetsukan Dojo. All CrossFit members are invited to observe.

Oct 29th, 2006

By Max Lewin

Please join us today, Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 10 AM for our monthly workout in the park. We will be across from Gold’s Gym, 600 Grand Ave, Oakland CA, at the pull-up bars. The workout is free for everyone, so bring friends and family. We can scale the workout for anyone of any age or physical condition.

Oct 27th, 2006

By Max Lewin

Please join us this Sunday, October 29, 2006 at 10 AM for our monthly workout in the park. We will be across from Gold’s Gym, 600 Grand Ave, Oakland CA, at the pull-up bars pictured above. The workout is free for everyone, so bring friends and family. We can scale the workout for anyone of any age or physical condition.

Oct 27th, 2006

By Max Lewin

Workout in the park this Sunday at 10:00 AM across from Gold’s Gym (600 Grand Ave., Oakland Ca.), at the Pull-up bars. Workout is Free! All are welcome.

Hey Affiliates: ever wonder how you can get people to understand that they are not getting their chins over the bar when they do so-called “pull-ups”? Members: ever wonder why we keep saying “chin over bar” when, darn it, you are getting your chin over the bar?!

Well the answer to both your questions is the same: The CrossFit Oakland Pull-Up Fraud Detector! This is a simple radio shack motion detector (cost $29.99) mounted above the bar in such a way that a tone chimes when you get your head high enough in a pull-up to break the beam (yep, you guessed it: chin over bar)!

So get 20 pull-ups on your bar and come to CrossFit Oakland and you will have 10 on ours!

Comments: Comments Off on 22 “Frans” @ CrossFit Oakland

Oct 23rd, 2006

By Max Lewin

For those of you who don’t know newly minted trainer Nicole O., she started CrossFit (and the Zone) last year. Since that time she has made amazing gains: She has two children under three years old, and at 35, she has reconfigured her body and is in the best shape of her life. Nicole has radically changed her body composition, flensing 50-60 pounds of inert metabolic material and gaining at least 10 pounds of lean muscle.

Here we see her doing 50 free squats in 55 seconds with perfect form (full ROM, full extension at the top, toes off the floor). She is a metabolic monster and this was too easy: we should have had her do 100. She also deadlifts 145, a PR and a huge increase from where she started last year.

When Nicole started CrossFit, she literally could not jump up 3 inches. She could not jump onto the curb! Here we see she has overcome her fear of heights, as she jumps onto a 24-inch box, climbs a 15 foot rope and jumps to a high bar from the top of the box.

Oct 22nd, 2006

By Mike Minium

We’ve recently had a few of our athletes (we consider all of our clients athletes) share with us how pleased they are with our style of training and the results they’re getting.

During this conversation, they’ll share with us a particular outcome that has led them to the conclusion that their level of fitness has improved. In so doing, they share with us their criteria for evaluating their own level of fitness (although they may not think of it in those terms).

Almost always, the outcome will be something along the lines of dropping down to X pounds for the first time in Y number of years, or being paid flirtatious compliments by relative youngsters, etc. In short, the outcomes that resonate with them are almost always tied to a qualitative end.

What’s interesting to us as trainers is that almost all of these qualitative outcomes can be seen coming a mile away, so to speak. Is this because we possess some sort of weird psychic ability? Absolutely not. We know that our athletes are getting results because we measure them. And it’s been our experience that the quantitative measures we do daily (and the results tied to those measures) usually precede the qualitative outcomes that clients are looking for.

So the next time you see us walking around with dry-erase markers or poring over the workout journals we keep, understand this: there’s a method to our madness.

While we take great pride in–and love to hear–qualitative endorsements of our training, it’s nothing that we can hang our hats on. We need data, and we need to be able to quantify, analyze, and compare said data. The bottom line is that if we’re not measuring, we’re not doing our job.

All of our athletes will become familiar (probably more familiar than they’d like) with this document–and the standards it defines–in the very near future.

Those of you who are familiar with the national CrossFit site (and the discussions that ensue there) will see that our guidelines are based in large part on the guidelines that CrossFit North put together (we’ve changed a few things here and there). We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for the work they did in creating the original assessment document. CrossFit Toronto has created a neat little graphic test based on the standards; you can take it HERE.